CHALLENGING CERTAINTY: THE UTILITY AND HISTORY OF COUNTERFACTUALISM

Counterfactualism is a useful process for historians as a thought-experiment because it offers grounds to challenge an unfortunate contemporary historical mindset of assumed, deterministic certainty. This article suggests that the methodological value of counterfactualism may be understood in terms of the three categories of common ahistorical errors that it may help to prevent: the assumptions of indispensability, causality , and inevitability. To support this claim, I survey a series of key counterfactual works and reflections on counterfactualism, arguing that the practice of counterfactualism evolved as both cause and product of an evolving popular assumption of the plasticity of history and the importance of human agency within it. For these reasons, counterfactualism is of particular importance both historically and politically. I conclude that it is time for a methodological re-assessment of the uses of such thought-experiments in history, particularly in light of counterfactualism's developmental relatedness to cultural, technological, and analytical modernity.     

Scale, causality, complexity and emergence: rethinking scale's ontological significance

Scale remains a pivotal yet highly contentious concept in geography. I survey the lively discussions engaged in recently by many critical/radical geographers regarding the theoretical status of scale. While these discussions have been intellectually fruitful, I argue that much more needs to be said. Drawing from complex systems theory, I argue that scale should be understood as an ontological category essential to understanding causality. Revalorising Aristotle's four categories of cause – formal, final, material and efficient – from two centuries of positivist thinking facilitates this endeavour. Research on the relationship between university-based poultry scientists and the poultry industry illustrates the explanatory potential of poly-scalar analysis.     

我国城市化与经济增长的因果关系研究——基于1978-2007年东、中、西部、东北地区面板数据

本文选取1978-2007年中国30个省市的面板数据,运用面板单位根检验、面板协整检验及误差修正模型对我国城市化与经济增长的因果关系进行了检验。实证结果表明:从全国来看,城市化是经济增长的长短期原因,但经济增长是城市化的长短期原因均无法得到证实;东部地区的城市化与经济增长的长短期均互为因果关系;对于中、西部、东北地区而言,城市化是经济增长的长期原因,但不是其短期原因,长短期内经济增长都不是城市化的原因。     

旅游业与我国经济增长关系的实证分析

旅游业与国民经济增长之间的关系一直是有关学者研究的对象,这也导致了对旅游业地位的不同认识。本文利用历史数据对改革开放以来中国居民旅游消费支出与经济增长之间的关系作出判断,认为我国旅游业与经济增长之间并不存在稳定的因果关系。文章对产生这种现象的原因进行了分析,并提出了相关政策建议。     

察同察异求规律:比较史学的追求

最早倡导比较史学的社会哲学家孔德和密尔以及被誉为比较史学名家的马克·布洛赫都认为,比较史学的功用在于察同察异求规律。然而,由于他们都未能找到决定历史进程的“首要因素”或“普遍原因”,终究未能实现探求规律的抱负。只有马克思主义历史唯物主义,才提供了实现这一抱负的根本途径。     

News Photographs and Environmental Agenda Setting

Who and what influences the issues that policymakers attend to is central to the question of how power is exercised in politics. This study builds upon research by Soroka that proposes an expanded model of agenda setting as a means to examine how the media influences issue salience for the public and policymakers. It expands on Soroka's model by investigating the hypothesis that photographic attention to environmental issues in the news media influences issue salience for the mass public and governmental decision makers. There is little research that substantiates the idea, but it is widely believed that photographs have influence on the policy agenda. I use a dynamic, multidirectional model to estimate whether the volume of news photographs, in addition to news stories, influences issue salience among the mass public and policymakers. Data are longitudinal and measures of attention are operationalized as the number of congressional committee meetings, concern for the environment as a “most important problem” in public opinion polls, environmental news stories in The New York Times, and environmental news photographs in Time magazine. Results suggest that photographic attention does influence environmental policy agenda dynamics in some counterintuitive ways that are distinct from the effects of the news stories. While news stories appear to increase public attention toward the environment, they have little influence on policymaker attention. News photographs, on the other hand, appear to drive congressional committee attention but elicit an ambivalent public response.     

基于旅游者网络关注度的旅游景区日游客量预测研究——以不同客户端百度指数为例

网络搜索引擎是旅游者获取旅游信息的最重要入口,百度指数通过反映关键词被搜索的次数表征旅游者的网络关注度。文章以三清山为例,首先利用协整理论及格兰杰因果检验分析了PC端和移动端百度指数与实际游客量之间的关系,进一步建立日游客量ARMA模型和分别加入PC 端和移动端百度指数的VAR模型,对游客量预测结果及预测能力进行比较分析,以期通过不同客户端、不同搜索关键词来填补游客量预测过程中旅游网络数据提取的单一性,得到更好的预测效果。发现移动端比PC端百度指数模型具有更好的预测效果,移动端比PC端百度指数对实际游客量的变动具有更好的解释能力。     

1. NARRATIVE FORM AND HISTORICAL SENSATION: ON SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER'S THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION1

Saul Friedländer's magnum opus, The Years of Extermination, has been received worldwide as an exemplary work of history. Yet it was written by a historian who in the last two decades has strenuously asserted the limits of Holocaust representation. At the center of this essay is a problem of historical writing: how to write a historical narrative of the Holocaust that both offers explanations of the unfolding events and also suggests that the most powerful sensation about those events, at the time and since, is that they are beyond words. I explore Friedländer's crafting of such a narrative by considering, first, the role of his attempt in The Years of Extermination to explain the Holocaust and, second, the narrative form of the book. The book is best seen, I argue, not primarily as a work of explanation but as a vast narrative that places an explanation of the Holocaust within a specific form of describing that goes beyond the boundaries of the historical discipline as it is usually practiced. This form of describing goes beyond the almost positivist attachment to facts that dominates current Holocaust historiography. By using Jewish individual testimonies that are interspersed in the chronological history of the extermination, Friedländer creates a narrative based on ruptures and breaks, devices we associate with works of fiction, and that historians do not usually use. The result is an arresting narrative, which I interpret by using Johan Huizinga's notion of historical sensation. Friedländer sees this narrative form as specific to the Holocaust. I view this commingling of irreducible reality and the possibility of art as a required sensibility that belongs to all historical understanding. And in this respect, The Years of Extermination only lays bare more clearly in the case of the Holocaust what is an essential element in all historical reconstruction.     

我国旅游业发展与经济增长的关系研究——基于不同省份的个体数据和面板数据分析

本文利用个体数据和面板数据的VAR模型和格兰奇因果检验,分析我国各个省份和不同经济区域的旅游业发展与经济增长的关系。基本结论是：从面板数据分析来看,总体上二者之间存在一种长期均衡和双向因果关系,但旅游业发展对经济增长的贡献要小于经济增长对旅游业发展的贡献;我国不同经济区域之间二者的因果关系表现出较强的地理差异性,东部发达地区“经济增长对旅游业发展的影响”远大于“旅游业发展对经济增长的影响”,中部地区次之,西部地区因果关系正好相反,东北地区为“经济增长影响旅游业发展”的单向因果关系;从单个省份的格兰奇因果关系看,仅13个省市的LGDP和LTOUR之间存在长期均衡关系,大部分省份存在双向因果关系,但在影响强度上有较大差异。     

中俄双边旅游与进出口贸易互动关系的实证研究

以1998-2011年中俄两国旅游与贸易数据为基础,利用格兰杰因果关系检验发现俄国出境旅游是进出口贸易的单向格兰杰原因,中国进出口贸易是出境旅游的单向格兰杰原因。旅游与贸易互动关系研究结果表明:俄国出境旅游对进出口中国贸易均有着明显的推动作用,并对进口贸易的推动作用要明显强一些;中国进出口贸易对出境俄旅游都有明显的促进作用,进口贸易的促进作用要略强一点。俄罗斯断面看,占中国入境旅游比对对华贸易依存度有一定影响;中国断面看,中国对俄贸易依存度对出境俄旅游偏好和占俄入境旅游比影响均较大。两国旅游与贸易的互动性差异特征分析能为两国双边旅游与贸易良性互动发展提供相应参考。